I tried it about 2 years ago with Win98 and a Toshiba laptop.
As an OEM license you have to return it sealed in it's packet to the manufacturer/distributor (not MS) Toshiba point blank refused to budge, even offering a full refund and return for the whole laptop rather than refunding the license. Madness ?..not really no.
Since forming my own company a few months ago I have learnt a lot about MS OEM licensing.
With the bigger players (Dell, Toshiba etc) MS allow them MASSIVE discounts on OEM licenses but only if they are distrubuted with every PC sold. Dell recently found a clause whereby they could offer ANY (even a non MS) operating system with the machines and still be within the agreement. so they started offering a little known DOS type OS as a free alternative.
Don't know if they are still doing it (I'll try and find some linkage) or if MS bolted down that particular hatch.
Why didn't they offer Linux ?
Simple, they didn't want to support it for desktop users. The tiny one floppy operating system they offered would not be used by anyone, so no-one would be calling support with problems, users would install their own copy of whatever OS and Dell don't support anything other than the supplied OS. Additionally MS could never see this Micro OS as a serious competetor so (possibly) wouldn't be quite so annoyed.
Bouncing off some Manager at PC World will probably get you nowhere. The best you will get is the ticket price reduced by the cost of the OEM License, As far as I know they aren't allowed to split products and once the OEM license has been disconnected from the machine it's worthless (They are little stickers now)
It really bugs me that I have a paid for boxed copy of Win2000 here (sitting unused) , but if I bought a new machine from Dell I would have to buy Windows all over again.
*shameless plug*
If anyone is interested in buying new laptops WITHOUT OEM software, with full manufacturers warranty's etc then they should contact me directly. I cannot do anything with the bigger names but I can supply quality OEM (unbadged) laptops without OEM software.
Wayne
On Thursday 17 October 2002 11:30, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Craig wrote:
Now I wonder if I should try this in PC World in Norwich ;)
It's a very good idea to. Make a fuss, make some noise, ideally make sure the duty manager is aware that you require a laptop without Windows. We'll only see them in the shops if we make the shops aware there's a demand for it.
Andrew.